


Strong

by cherriesandwines



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:15:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherriesandwines/pseuds/cherriesandwines
Summary: Sherlock comes to John one night when he's struggling with wanting to self harm.





	Strong

**Author's Note:**

> Triggers for self harm, obviously. Nothing graphic, just referenced. But trigger warning for the ideology behind it. Pretty dialogue heavy. My first post on here, my first fic in a long time.

“I’m coming to you.” Sherlock said, under his breath from the doorway to the kitchen. He didn’t look at John but he wanted to.

“Hmm?” John put his newspaper down a bit and twisted his body to see the man behind him. 

Sherlock clears his throat and speaks a tiny bit louder. “I said... I’m coming to you…” He trailed off more so than finishing his sentence. He finally looked up at John.

“Oh.” A realization. “Uh, okay.” His eyes widened, they were stuck on Sherlock. “Do you want to sit down?”

Sherlock looked around at his options before agreeing and settling on his usual chair. He sat and crossed his arms in his lap, his stomach concave and his back hunched. He wasn’t trying to be standoffish but he didn’t know how to act in this situation.

“Do you want to talk about it?” John finished folding up his newspaper and putting it on the table beside him and his tea.

“I don’t know.” Again he wasn’t looking at the older man across from him.

“It might help.”

“I’m not good with explaining, John.”

A light chuckle, a smirk. “When has that ever been true?”

“When it’s about this.” He finally looked up.

“Of course, I didn’t mean to make a joke…” 

“Yes you did.”

“Yes, alright. I did. But I shouldn’t have.” John scooted forward in his chair the tiniest bit. Elbows on the armrests, hands dangling off the front. “What happened?”

“I just… I was overwhelmed.”

“By what?”

“Thoughts. Cases. I don’t know, gravity. Everything.” Sherlock gestured broadly. 

John nodded. “From the first thought tonight to the time you came to me, how long was it? How long in between?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what time it is. When I went to my room and started playing I was fine then I stopped and couldn’t start again and things just… built up.”

“Without the distraction?”

“Yeah.”

John thought for a second, did some mental math. “I’ve been reading for a good 20 or so and the music stopped around then too.”

“Well, then…”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t know any of this, he didn’t understand it half the time and that killed him. He wanted nothing more than to understand himself. He understands so much about so many things and people, can figure people out, can tell them exactly why they behave the way they do but not when it comes to himself. Somewhere over the years while his other skills were building his ability to understand himself became weaker.

“Sherlock?”

“I didn’t know if I wanted to!”

“What do you mean?”

“God, John!” John’s name sounded almost like a growl. Sherlock burst up out of his chair and started pacing. John just followed him with his eyes. “I didn’t know!”

“What didn’t you know?” John was doing everything in his power to keep his voice calm. Him getting worked up as well was the absolute last thing Sherlock needed right now.

Sherlock ignored the question and continued pacing, it was an angry pace. He passed by the desk and swung his hand at a stack of papers sitting there, a couple of them flying off the desk. He shook his hands as if they were asleep. John had seen Sherlock worked up before, but rarely so anxious. Rarely so frustrated with himself. 

Neither of them spoke for a couple minutes. Sherlock continued pacing, trying to calm himself down, or perhaps work himself up more. During his episode John got up and poured himself a second cup of tea, poured one for Sherlock as well. He returned and placed his beside his chair and Sherlock’s beside Sherlock’s. He sat back down and watched as his friend took his final few steps.

Sherlock stopped and took a deep dramatic breath. He turned to John and saw the tea sitting beside his seat. He sighed gently and walked over to his chair, sitting down again. He grabbed the tea left for him and blew on it gently. “Thank you.” Quietly. 

John just nodded and sipped his own tea. He waited for Sherlock to speak first.

“I didn’t know if I wanted to come to you… or if I wanted to just… be.”

“To hurt yourself?”

Sherlock said nothing but didn’t disagree. He took a sip.

“But you did come.”

“Apparently so, yes.”

“Do you want to tell me why you wanted to hurt yourself in the first place tonight?”

“I told you.”

“Because you were overwhelmed, yes. But why does being overwhelmed make you want to hurt yourself?”

“I don’t know.” A beat. “I don’t like not having control, John.”

John knew that very well. “But how would hurting yourself help?”

They agreed on the term hurting yourself rather than cutting because it wasn’t always cutting. Sometimes he would bang his wrists, sometimes he would burn himself, sometimes he would snap an elastic until the skin swelled or bruised, there were a handful of ways Sherlock took his anger out on himself so to not have the conversation every time they agreed to leave it at that unless Sherlock wanted to give more details.

“It gives me something to focus on. Something to calm me down.”

“So it’s just another distraction?”

Sherlock shook his head and took another sip of his tea. “It different.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know…” Sherlock was getting a little worked up again, John could see it on his face. His eyebrows were scrunched and his jaw was tight. His chest was rising and falling a bit quicker than it should. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, Sherlock.” He spoke kindly and softly. “It matters. Take a deep breath and relax. We have time.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and did as John told him. In and out. He opened his eyes and licked his lips. The muscles in his face less strained already.

“When I… whatever… there’s nothing else there. I don’t focus on anything else. Other things don’t do that. Even music, or cases… I still think about other things from time to time with them, thoughts creep into my brain. But not when I cut, which is what it was to be tonight, by the way,” John nodded. “Yes it’s a distraction in a sense, but it’s more of an escape I guess. Like everything else is fading away around me. Which I realize sounds ridiculous when I say it,” 

John cut him off. “It’s not ridiculous.” 

Sherlock nodded a bit, maybe as acceptance maybe as acknowledgment. “It’s like things build up inside me and around me, and other distractions do, in fact, distract but this is a release of those things building up. It’s an entirely different result.”

“I understand.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Do you?”

“As much as I can, yeah. Or at least I’m trying.”

“It’s stupid. It’s stupid anyway.” Sherlock put his cup on the side table and started to get up.

Quickly, John spoke. “I’m proud of you.”

Sherlock stopped at the edge of his seat. He looked at John with confusion. 

“I don’t understand.”

“You spent 20 minutes tonight wanting to hurt yourself. You could have. You had plenty of time and opportunity. But you didn’t, Sherlock. That’s amazing. Do you realize how strong that makes you?”

“I’m not strong.”

“You are!”

Sherlock turned his head to the side, didn’t want to let John see him rolling his eyes. He didn’t feel strong. He never felt strong. Sometimes he felt smart, sometimes he felt important, sometimes he felt needed but very rarely, if ever, did he feel strong. Especially when it came to his self harm. “I’m not.”

“Why not?”

He opened his mouth to speak, a few stutters coming out but no real words. He didn’t even know. Eventually words came together. “Strong people don’t do this.”

“And you didn’t. Not tonight.”

“But I have…”

“That doesn’t matter. We’re talking about tonight.”

“I wanted to.”

“And that’s exactly what makes you strong. You wanted to, but you didn’t. You came to me.”

“That makes me weak, not strong, John.”

“No,” John shook his head. “I’m not gonna let you do that. There is nothing weak about talking to people when you need help. Nothing. It is the strongest and bravest thing you could possibly do.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“Well, I’m telling you it is that way.”

Sherlock’s head fell. He looked at his lap, his fingers connected to his hands, connected to his wrist. His skin was so pale and soft. His blue veins beneath his skin stood out. The way his skin looked so delicate was enough to make him want to hurt himself. He locked his fingers together and exhaled. “I really wanted to tonight, John. I was holding it.”

“It?”

“Blade.”

“Ah.”

John was watching Sherlock, who was clearly not doing well. Of course he knew that but had a stranger walked into the room they would have been able to know it, too. It had been a long night for him and it was barely 8pm. 

“What made you come to me?”

“What?”

“Well, we’ve talked about why you wanted to hurt yourself, but what made you stop tonight? What made you put down the blade and walk out here to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think.”

Sherlock looked up at John who had a kind face. He always did, but right now, just the two of them, the dull lighting made everything more clear. “I didn’t want to have to hide it from you again like the other times.”

“Other times? The ones before?” Sherlock didn’t respond. It took John a moment. “Oh.”

It had been over two weeks since John found out about Sherlock’s habit, which had been going on a long while, he learned. They made the deal that night that next time Sherlock wanted to hurt himself he would come to John instead. He agreed but hadn’t done so. John thought it was a good thing that Sherlock wasn’t coming to him, he thought it meant Sherlock was okay and perhaps that being caught, for lack of a better word, was enough to get him to stop or at least do it less often. But he realized now it meant he was hiding it still.

“I’m sorry.”

John shook his head gently and pursed his lips. “Don’t be.”

“I am.”

“How many times? Since our talk, I mean.”

Sherlock sat for a moment. “Three.”

“Okay.”

“I wanted to come to you those times but I couldn’t. John, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Sherlock. I wish you had come to me, yeah, of course. But I appreciate that you came tonight. That’s strength, Sherlock. I promise you it is.”

Sherlock didn’t know if he believed it but he wanted to. He thought he should. He didn’t feel strong but he trusted John. If John said he was strong, maybe he was. Maybe eventually he’d feel that way, too. He had convinced himself over the years that the only way to be strong was to not want to hurt himself, he never considered that the want isn’t the problem, his thoughts he can’t control aren’t the problem, the action he chooses is what makes him strong. They sat there for a few minutes, neither of them speaking. Neither of them wanting to.

“This tea is very good.” 

John smiled. “Just got it today. New at the shop.”

“Buy more.”

“We have plenty in the kitchen.”

“Well when we run out, buy more.”

“Or you could buy the tea, for once.”

“But that’s your job.”

“It’s my job because you don’t do it and if I don't, then we have no tea!”

Sherlock smiled, sipping his tea. It didn’t matter. He was, in fact, happier to be sitting here bickering with his friend rather than sitting alone on the floor of his bedroom as he had many times before, after feeling how he did that night, bleeding. He much preferred this. He wanted to remember that for next time. 

John lifted his cup to his lips, smacking them a bit at the taste. “It might be a bit too strong for me. Need sugar next time, maybe.”

“Sometimes strong is good.” 

John looked at Sherlock, knowing that was the closest they were going to get tonight to a mutual understanding and acceptance that night. “It is. Strong is good.”


End file.
